Lost iPhone: SF police aided Apple investigators

LOST IPHONE PROTOTYPE

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, September 4, 2011

It isn't uncommon for San Francisco police to help private investigators, as they did when Apple security searched a San Francisco home looking for a lost iPhone prototype, said Police Chief Greg Suhr.

Four San Francisco police officers provided backup to two private Apple investigators who were searching for an iPhone prototype that they say was lost in a Mission District restaurant in July.

Apple tracked the phone to a Bernal Heights home using GPS technology and called San Francisco police, hoping for assistance, said Lt. Troy Dangerfield.

In July, two Apple employees met with the resident and searched his home after asking permission. The four plainclothes officers did not enter the home, Suhr said.

Sergio Calderon, a 22-year-old man who lives in the home, told SF Weekly that he thought all six people were police officers. If he had known two of them worked for Apple, he told the paper, he would not have let them into his house.

"When they came to my house, they said they were SFPD," Calderon told SF Weekly. "I thought they were SFPD. That's why I let them in."

Suhr said he did not know how the Apple employees had presented themselves to Calderon. He said his officers did not participate in the search.